White Regarded as the source whence the seven prismatic colors diverge, it stands for the Logos of a hierarchy. Nearly all the archaic religio-philosophies state that light or white is born of darkness, the incomprehensible deeps of universal life which is darkness only to our poorly evolved sense and mind. In this sense, darkness may often be spoken of as absolute light.

As opposed to black, it mystically signifies pure and good: for example, white magician or white magic.

(See also: White, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

White Island Translation of the Sanskrit seta-dvipa; an island mentioned frequently in ancient Hindu Puranic accounts of the various continents or islands which have flourished and disappeared in past geologic ages, as well as those which now are or which will come into being in time.

It was an actual continental system with outlying islands lying mainly within the arctic regions, and its remains (with partial submersions and re-elevations within geologic history) are today known as Greenland, Siberia, and several other places. It is equivalent to the second continent in theosophical teaching, although there were at much later dates than this continental system a few small islands also called white.

Another dvipa mentioned in the Puranas, Saka-dvipa, has not yet come into existence and is now mainly under the floors of the oceans. It may be called the sixth continent. Both Sveta-dvipa and Saka-dvipa have been confused by some writers with the islands called Ruta and Daitya, which have both disappeared: Ruta between 800 and 900 thousand years ago, and the smaller Daitya at a much later date but still several hundred thousand years ago. Ruta and Daitya were remnants of the fourth or Atlantean continent.

Mystically, although based on geological history, Sveta-dvipa is often called part of the Eternal Land or north pole and the lands immediately surrounding it. The unvarying traditions of a large part of the Orient state that it is the only locality which escapes the fate of most other dvipas: total submersion under the waters of the oceans. All the avataras of Vishnu were said to have come originally from the White Island. It is sometimes called preeminently the home or source of white magicians, and is contrasted with Atala, often called the abode of black magicians.

(See also: White Island, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

White Lotus Day May 8; commemorating H. P. Blavatsky's death in 1891.

(See also: White Lotus Day, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

White Magic, White Magicians.

See MAGIC, MAGICIAN

(See also: White Magic, White Magicians, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

White Stone "To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it" (Rev 2:17).

In Revelation, a symbolic record of John's initiation, the white stone is the new, pure, inner psychological vehicle in the person which the spirit within him is enabled to acquire and work through when the victory in initiation has been won; and the new name signifies the new self which has thus become manifest in him.

The stone "had the word prize engraved on it, and was the symbol of that word given to the neophyte who, in his initiation, had successfully passed through all the trials in the Mysteries. It was the potent white cornelian of the mediaeval Rosicrucians, who took it from the Gnostics" (TG 369).

In exoteric rites this truth was represented by the gift of an actual stone or gem, and we hear of the alba petra (white stone) of initiation; while the Gnostic gems and their inscriptions are well known. It also calls to mind the philosopher's stone.

(See also: White Stone, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Widow's Son "A name given to the French Masons, because the Masonic ceremonies are principally based on the adventures and death of Hiram Abif, 'the widow's son,' who is supposed to have helped to build the mythical Solomon's Temple" (TG 369).

See also HIRAM ABIF

(See also: Widow's Son, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Widblain.

See VIDBLAINN

(See also: Widblain, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wigred.

See VIGRIDSSLATTEN

(See also: Wigred, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Will-born Used in The Secret Doctrine as equivalent to mind-born -- referring specifically to those beings in the early third root-race "while it was yet in its state of purity" who were created by means of will power through kriyasakti by the Sons of Wisdom.

This progeny is termed the Sons of Ad, Sons of the Fire-mist, or Sons of Will and Yoga. "It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous Being, called the 'Initiator,' and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings. 'Set apart' in Archaic genesis for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis, 'Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras' -- to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth and during the present cycle" (SD 1:207). Theosophy teaches that in future ages generation by means of will power through krisyasakti will again be the method of producing offspring.

The Puranas also refer to will-born progeny, termed chhandajas.

(See also: Will-born, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Waters of Space Chaos, the great deep, the great cosmic Mother, the universal cosmic matrix. According to Thales and other ancient philosophers, the water of cosmic space was the first principle emanating from the spatial deeps of spirit and producing the universe through emanational evolution. Various Greek philosophers have represented aether, fire, air, or water as the primordial cosmic principle; and each of these was true, though giving only a part of the truth. These philosophies as aspects of a whole in much the same way as the several great schools of Hindu philosophy are.

Thus the waters of space are equivalent to the veil of cosmic spirit. Water in ancient cosmogonies corresponded to the Hindu prakriti or pradhana, and like the Greek Second Logos was endowed with feminine or productive characteristics. Thus the archaic Greeks in one form of their cosmogonical philosophy taught that all things, including the gods, came forth from Ocean and his wife Tethys:

"Ocean is the immeasurable space (Spirit in Chaos), which is the Deity . . .; and Tethys is not the Earth, but primordial matter in the process of formation" (SD 2:65).

"But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and Western, in all those personations of the Female Power in nature, or nature -- the noumenal and the phenomenal. One is its purely metaphysical aspect, . . . the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time divine from the stand-point of practical human conception and Occultism. They are all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the 'Great Deep' or the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable veil between the Incognisable and the Logos of Creation" (SD 1:431).

(See also: Waters of Space, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

We.

See VE

(See also: We, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Week The period of seven days was known to the Hindus, Egyptians, Hebrews, and other ancient nations, but not used by the Greeks or Romans until the Christian Emperor Theodosius. It is not based on any exact astronomical cycle, so far as is ordinarily known, though it may be considered roughly as a subdivision of the month. It was well known to the Hebrews, and in the New Testament the word week translates the Greek Sabbator which is the Hebrew Shabbath. Though commonly Sabbath is taken to mean a seventh day after six, a more esoteric sense makes it a period of seven time units of rest after a period of seven active time units -- in other words after a septenary manvantara comes a septenary pralaya. The word is also used of other sevenfold time periods, such as a week of years or of ages; for each of the days in a week of years represents 360 solar years, and the whole week 2,520 years. The Hebrews "had a Sabbatical week, a Sabbatical year, etc., etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 hours or 24,000 years -- in their secret calculations of the Sods. We of the present times call an age a century" (SD 2:395).

The nomenclature of the seven days of the week according to the seven sacred planets is serially uniform in the various calendars, and points to a common origin of this knowledge. It can be arrived at by dividing the day into 24 hours and assigning a planet to each hour, for instance, first counting from Saturn, then Jupiter, then Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, down to the Moon when, by this system of counting and pausing at every fourth, both inclusive, the first planetary hour of each day, beginning with the sunrise, will be found to be governed by the planet which is assigned to that day. The same occurs with a ten-hour day, or by counting the planets in order and giving one to each quarter of the day (cf Fund 250).

Here are the names of the days of the week in the English, ancient Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Greek, and Latin systems as being sacred to their deities:

English // Anglo-Saxon // Scandinavian // Greek // Latin

Sunday // Sunnandaeg // Day of the Sun // Phoebus // Apollo

Monday // Monandaeg // Day of the Moon // Artemis // Diana

Tuesday // Tiwesdaeg // Day of Tiw // Ares // Mars

Wednesday // Wodnesdaeg // Day of Odin // Hermes // Mercurius

Thursday // Thunresdaeg // Day of Thor // Zeus // Jupiter

Friday // Frigedaeg // Day of Frigga // Aphrodite // Venus

Saturday // Saeterndaeg // Day of (?) // Kronos // Saturnus

Blavatsky writes that in the course of time the seven-headed or septenary Dragon-logos became split up into "four heptanomic parts or twenty-eight portions," which suggests the division of the week and the month, into the seven days of the week, and the 28 days of the lunar month, and the four seasons of the year. "Each lunar week has a distinct occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its special characteristics; as each of the twelve constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has an occult influence either for good or for evil" (SD 1:409).

The ancient Mexicans had a different system of dividing their weeks and months: their week consisted of five days, and their month of 20 days. There were likewise other weeks among other nations or peoples as, for instance, the Athenians had a week of ten days, etc.

(See also: Week, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Werewolf.

See LYCANTHROPY

(See also: Werewolf, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

West The forces of the four cardinal points have each a distinct occult property, and are ruled over by the four regents.

Blavatsky states that there is occult philosophy in the early Christian doctrine, echoes of which still linger in both the Orthodox Greek and the Roman Catholic Churches, that public calamities are due to invisible messengers from the north and west, and particularly from the west, the conjunction of the two points being combined in the northwest (SD 1:123).

Most good, on the other hand, flows forth from the north and east. The Egyptian goddess Hathor is spoken of as the infernal Isis, the goddess preeminently of the west or nether world. East and west are not localities but directions, and when used in reference to localities the meaning is purely relative. Good and evil, too, are relative terms as experienced by human beings, for such messengers and influences are in all cases strictly karmic agents; and often what people in their blindness and weakness think a calamity or misfortune may indeed be a blessing in disguise.

See also CARDINAL POINTS

(See also: West, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wheat Brought to earth by Lords of Wisdom from other spheres, as were all the grains, and indeed all plants and animals. Yet wheat is said not to be known in the wild state nor to have been developed from any grass. Plato speaks of inventors -- gods and demigods incarnate in human beings -- who appeared successively among the races of mankind after their divine rulers had departed, and discovered fire, wheat, and wine. The kabiri and also Isis are said to have brought wheat, as is Isis. In Egyptian symbology the Osirified defunct becomes Khem, who gleans the field of Aaru -- i.e., "he gleans either his reward or punishment, as that field is the celestial locality (Devachan) where the defunct is given wheat, the food of divine justice" (SD 1:221).

In ancient Greece wheat was always associated with Demeter or Ceres (whence the word cereal), and as Demeter was the preeminent goddess of the Mysteries, sheaves of wheat also were associated with the Mysteries. Maize held the same place in ancient America. In the Christian Church wheat is still the food in the bread -- the literal, physical "body of Christ."

(See also: Wheat, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wheel Perpetual gyratory motion; a vortex, a center of revolving force. Matter is not only motion itself in low ranges of the cosmos, but has likewise many modes of motion, although not in the sense in which this phrase was used in the 19th century.

Lord Kelvin's vortex-atoms illustrate the point, for he showed that many of the properties attributed to atoms could be represented by regarding atoms as vortices in a frictionless, incompressible fluid. More recent analysis of the atom has failed to resolve it into anything more than electric particles whose properties are functions of their motions. "Atoms are called 'Vibrations' in Occultism . . . " (SD 2:633). Fohat traces spiral lines and forms wheels or centers of force around which primordial cosmic matter expands and contracts and passes through stages of consolidation ending in globes, and later through stages of etherealization. Vortical motion is a universal law, as seen in the stellar universe and in the electronic constitution of the physical atom, giving a fuller meaning to the word cycle.

Wheel, cycle, globes, and revolutions all pertain to the same fundamental conception of whirling, revolving, or gyratory motion of beings and substances; and as no motion can take place except in matter, space, and time, the whirlings and revolutions of beings and things include likewise the time periods or cyclic returns of beings and events throughout duration. Wherever there is a whirling or turning, whether of matter or of an event in time, it is because it is a being or thing which is active in reproducing itself in cyclic events (cf Ezekiel 1:15-21). This is one of the archaic ways of understanding what is now called the principle of Relativity. Indeed, so intimate and entangled are the actor and the act -- the being and its movements in time -- that it is not always easy to distinguish the actor inherent and moving from the effects in space and time of such movement; so that when we speak of a cycle of time we are perforce obliged to conceive of a moving entity producing the cycle, albeit the moving entity may not be visible to us and indeed may be incomprehensible. Hence, the frequent and often perplexing usage of wheel or wheelings found in ancient occult writings.

See also WINGED WHEEL; GLOBE, WINGED

(See also: Wheel, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Whip of Osiris The nehbet (scepter), represented as a flail; one of the three instruments of power held by Osiris in the Egyptian representations of the god of judgment over the dead. These texts address the deity as having the fan in his hand "and who purges the Amenti of sinful hearts as a winnower sweeps his floor of the fallen grains and locks the good wheat into his garner."

In the Gospels John the Baptist speaks of him who shall come after him: "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Matt 3:12).

(See also: Whip of Osiris, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Whirling Souls Used in reference to the Hebrew Gilgulim, the cyclic journeys or whirlings of the monad, and the Qabbalistic teaching that during the course of these peregrinations or transmigrations it enters body after body.

(See also: Whirling Souls, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Whirlwind A gyrating wind; in theosophy, when applied to the movements of a universe, a name for the moving of the Great Breath and for the various functions and activities of fohat.

Motion, the divine breath, becomes the cosmic whirling or whirlwind and sets in motion the particles in space, bringing about now their coagulation and concretion, now their dissipation and dispersion.

Deity thus mystically becomes a whirlwind; pulsatory life assumes a whirling movement. Stages in world formation are described as diffused cosmic matter, then the fiery whirlwind, the first stage in the formation of a nebula, leading eventually to the formation of solar system and more particularly of a globe or group of solar or planetary globes.

The primordial seven forces, the first seven breaths of the cosmic dragon of wisdom or cosmic manifest intelligence, produce from their circumgyrating motions the fiery whirlwind. The first chapter of Ezekiel mentions a whirlwind and other descriptions of cosmic evolution, especially wheels.

(See also: Whirlwind, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wisdom-eye.

See PINEAL GLAND

(See also: Wisdom-eye, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Wisdom-Religion, Wisdom-Science.

See THEOSOPHY

(See also: Wisdom-Religion, Wisdom-Science, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Witch of Endor The wise woman of Endor or 'Eyn-dor, mentioned in the Bible as having "a familiar spirit" (Sam 28:7-25), who called up the shade of Samuel at the request of the dejected Saul, saying: "I saw gods ascending out of the earth"; and the prophecy of Saul's death and Israel's fall into the hands of the Philistines proved to be correct.

Blavatsky speaks of her as "Sedecla, the Obeah woman of Endor" (IU 1:494); Sedecla may be a transliteration of an old Hebrew name Tsedeqlah [from tsedeq righteous, just, exact, accurate] -- a possible reference to her necromantic skill. She was one of the class of psychic seeresses so well known in ancient story, whose practices were almost universally condemned.

Passages in holy scriptures, such as 1 Samuel, have misled many Europeans into believing that such methods of attempting to peer into the future were proper and considered morally permissible by the wise of ancient days. Yet one has but to read this chapter to

See that the woman knew her practice was done against the law then prevailing, which apparently made necromantic intercourse of this type punishable with death (cf 28:9). Traffic with the dead was not infrequently resorted to in ancient times, but was censured as unholy, if not evil. Such raisings of the dead have been common in all ages by necromancers, sorcerers, and traffickers in lower magic; although it is quite true that ancient legend and story provides a number of instances where people of prominence resorted in moments of desperation to such methods in an attempt to gain foreknowledge of events coming to pass: for example, the incident related by Homer of the raising of the shade of the seer Teiresias by Odysseus (Odyssey bk 11) and again the necromantic practices of Sextus, the son of Pompey, through the "witch" Erictho on the plains of Thessaly, as described by Lucan (Pharsalia Bk 6, vv. 570-820).

(See also: Witch of Endor, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)